But then, beyond that, there is a deeper lesson here.  ‘The Son of Man’ on our Lord’s lips not only expressed His dignity as Messiah, but His relation to the whole race of men; and declared that He was what we nowadays call ideal manhood.  And that is the point, as I take it, of the contrast between the restful lives of the lower creatures, who all have a place fitted to them, where they curl themselves up, and go to sleep, and are comfortable, and the higher life of men, which is homeless in the deepest sense.  ‘The Son of Man,’ He in whom the whole essence of humanity is, as it were, concentrated; and who, in His own person, presents the very type and perfection of manhood, cannot but be homeless.

Ah, yes I man’s prerogative is unrest, and he should recognise it as a blessing.  It is the condition of all noble life; it is the condition of all growth.  ‘The foxes have holes,’ and the fox’s hole fits it, and therefore the hole of the fox to-day is what it was in the beginning, and ever shall be.  Man has no such abode, therefore he grows.  Man is blessed with that great ‘discourse that looks before and after,’ and his thoughts wander through eternity, and therefore he is capable of endless advance, and if he is in the path where his Maker has meant him to be, sure of endless growth.  The more a man gets like a beast, the more has he of the beast’s lot of happy contentment in this world.  And the more he gets like a man, like the ‘Son of Man,’ the more has he to realise that he is a pilgrim and a sojourner, as all his fathers were.

And so, dear friends, because disciples must follow the Son of Man who is the King, and whose life is the perfect mirror of manhood, restless homelessness is our lot, if we are His disciples.  Ay! and it is our blessing.  It is better to sleep beneath the stars than beneath golden canopies, and to lay the head upon a stone than upon a lace pillow, if the ladder is at our side and the face of God above it.  Better be out in the fields, a homeless stranger with the Lord, than huddling together and perfectly comfortable in houses of clay that perish before the moth.

Do not let us repine; let us be thankful that we cannot, if we are Christ’s, but be strangers here; for all the bitterness and pain of unrest and homelessness pass away, and all sweetness and gladness is breathed into them, when we can say, ’I am a sojourner and a stranger with Thee,’ and when in our unrest we are ’following the Lamb whithersoever He goeth.’

CHRIST STIMULATING SLUGGISH DISCIPLESHIP

     ’And another of His disciples said unto Him, Lord, suffer me first
     to go and bury my father. 22.  But Jesus said unto him, Follow Me;
     and let the dead bury their dead.’—­MATT. viii. 21-22.